Rensselaer, Mt. Sinai announce wide-ranging collaboration

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai will work collaboratively on a range of research programs in Neuroscience, genomics, imaging technology and big data analysis under an agreement signed Wednesday morning at Rensselaer’s Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Research on the Troy campus.

“With high competition for funding and with the pharmaceutical industry investing less in research and development, institutions with complementary strengths must partner to revolutionize biomedical research,” said Dr. Dennis S. Charney, dean of the Icahn School and the executive vice president for academic affairs at the Mount Sinai Medical Center.

Shirley Ann Jackson, RPI’s president, said that combining the school’s engineering, biotechnology and science skills, with the biomedical research and patient care at Mt. Sinai “would result in radical innovations in health care.”

A new supercomputer at Mt. Sinai combined with RPI’s existing supercomputer will enable the two institutions to analyze genomic data and develop predictive models of disease to improve diagnoses and patient treatment.

The two schools already collaborate in a number of areas, and Charney and Jackson both expect the new agreement to lead to additional jobs and new businesses. Jackson said entrepreneurship “is a key focus” at Rensselaer.

The two plan to pursue funding under President Obama’s recently announced BRAIN initiative (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies). And Mt. Sinai, said Charney, will provide a laboratory for new devices being developed in RPI’s biomedical engineering program.

“You’re going to be in partnership with a very large healthcare system run by Mt. Sinai,” he told a researcher in the audience at a press conference announcing the collaboration.